I am having a difficult time removing my own ACTIVEX DLL REFERENCES within my VB 6.0 SP5 IDE.

These DLLs represent interfaces which I have changed during my development process AND have moved into different
folders where they were then registered and unregistered using COM Explorer 2.0. COM Explorer 2.0 does not list the files (at least I can't seem to find them). Symantec System Works doesnt complain about them however Visual Basic STILL lists them even though they dont exist. No matter how hard I try to remove them, they simply won't go away. I have even uninstalled visual basic, reinstalled it and those pesky references are still there. In some cases the items are duplicated several times as well which is a headache since I dont know which one to check off initially as the names are identical. The bogus references always give ERROR LOADING DLL so I keep trying until I find one that works. Anyone know what I need to do to fix this. I may have deleted the original folder where these DLLS were first compiled and recompiled them in a totally new folder. I have had these references for quite a long time and can't get rid of them.

Try this. Use regedit or anothe registry editor and search for the name of your dll(s). In the case of the one ActiveX dll I had created on my system (test.dll), I found two references, one under CLASSID

No, you don't understand....this has nothing to do with any particular vbp file. If i open a brand new project and go to references it will still be there. It seems theres somthing in my registry that Visual Basic is picking up that COM Explorer 2.0 and Symantec SystemWorks can't find. Both these applications should point out DLLs that are behaving badly but neither one does. Is Visual Basic getting its DLL listing from somewhere else? How do i fix up my DLL references in Visual Basic IDE

Try this. Use regedit or anothe registry editor and search for the name of your dll(s). In the case of the one ActiveX dll I had created on my system (test.dll), I found two references, one under CLASSID and one under Typelib. Deletint the root entry for these keys (the one with the long alphanumeric GUID, removed the entry from VB's project references list. The ones you need to delete should be the ones with the old folder locations. Also, AFAIK, you need to unregister the dlls in the original locations and then reregister them after you've move or created new ones.

under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{ class id number here} i found some other sub entries so i deleted the classid root and it worked!

I need to get a better understanding of how the registry impacts programs (specifically what the various sections mean and how I can use them programmatically for example to perform smart updates and patches)

Glad it worked. I understand your reluctance to monkey with the registry but sometimes it's necessary. Try the AR Registry Access Library from: http://www.sevillaonline.com/ActiveX/
It's free and gives you more options for dealing with the registry from VB than the standard routines. They also have a very nice library for working with ini files as well. Though Microsoft encourages the use of the registry for just about everything, an ini file is often all you need, especially if your application is the only one that needs to access the information.

I don't have a reference of the top of my head but I'm sure a quick Google search will turn up several good sources of information on using the registry.

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